Thursday, June 13, 2013

Aforementioned article at the Atlantic here. I think he gets one thing right, that these people are looking for authenticity. And there's a common bond atheists can have with questioning, thinking young Christians - look, there are more important things in life than accumulating possessions to impress your neighbors and saying "no" to people who might be a little different than you. My main quibble with his assertions is that he frames this mostly in a "why are people saying no to Christianity" way, but increasingly there are a lot of people that grew up outside religion from the start (like me) and never had to actively reject it.

2 comments:

I felt that he was projecting what he wanted to see in the atheists' answers: talking about how their rational choices were actually emotional ones. Meh. None of what he said described my deconversion.

I like to tell people it's like "innocent until proven guilty".. In trials we assume innocence unless there is enough evidence to prove guilt.

Well, the Christians I use to talk to seem to assume God, lacking the evidence to disprove him. Atheists tend to assume not-God lacking the evidence to prove his existence. Changing where the burden of proof lies is easy to describe, but difficult for xtians to relate to.